by Aurora, Lexi
“Only if you want a glass,” she said sharply, her voice like a judge’s gavel falling, “and don’t do it on my account. I really was only trying to be accommodating, but if we’re all doing whatever we like I think I’ll stick to my martinis. If it’s all the same to you, Wesley.”
“Sure, great. Have a ball,” he said dryly. Wesley cleared his throat and Liza reached out and pinched him. For a second, it pissed him the hell off. He was trying to take her side. He could think of plenty of reactions from her, but getting pinched wasn’t one of them.
“Good, now that that business is settled,” Mrs. Baker said, glossing right over Wesley’s unfriendly tone, “why don’t we get down to business. Liza, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
"Mom, come on. It's not a job interview," Wesley said through gritted teeth. It was, and they all knew it, but that didn't mean he had to like it. His mom didn't look at him, and that was a bad sign. She was really hitting her stride now, and almost nothing would stop her.
"Of course it's not, dear, nobody's saying it is. It's just ‘getting to know you’ chatter, isn't it, Liza?" she asked in her sugary-sweet voice.
"It's fine. I don't mind talking about it, although there isn't much to tell. My mother raised me on her own. It wasn't easy, but she did her best," Liza said gracefully, her back straight and no sign of looking down at her plate. She wasn't touching any of the stupid tea sandwiches the butler had put on her plate, but she wasn't backing down, either.
"A single mother?" his mom asked in horror. She took another long sip of her drink, her nose wrinkled and her eyes overly bright. Some of that was due to the liquor, but Wesley wasn't naive enough to think that was all of it. She was getting drunk on more than just the martinis now. She was getting drunk on human suffering. Like a goddamned vampire, he thought again sickly.
“It happens, Mom, it’s not the fifties anymore, or didn’t anyone tell you?” he said dully.
"Wesley, watch it," Charles interjected. Wesley's only response was a grunt. They were the right words, the dutiful words, but they were limp and uninterested. Why Charlotte would want to marry him was beyond Wesley, but he knew better to ask. He wasn't exactly in a position to lecture anyone on the state of his or her relationship. His date was for hire, for Christ's sake.
“You always were a good boy, Charles, but you needn’t come to my rescue now. You know what your brother is like.”
"That's right," Wesley said, "we all know what I'm like, don't we?"
"I wonder, though, do you, Liza? Do you know what your new beau is really like?" Asking this question, Mrs. Baker looked even more predatorial than ever. She leaned forward, peering at Liza with bright, too-sharp eyes. Wesley put his hand on Liza's upper thigh and squeezed. They should have come up with some kind of a safe word before ever walking into this hornets' nest, and now it was too late.
“I believe so, at least as well as any of us ever can,” Liza answered quietly. Mrs. Baker let out an unamused titter of laughter and Charles joined her dutifully. Wesley hardly heard them. It felt too hot in the damned house, breathing harder than he should have been while he looked at Liza’s face, searching for who the hell knew what. She didn’t even look at him for part of a second. She didn’t look at anyone but his mom. Looking at her that way, she was well on the way to becoming Wesley’s number one hero.
"It's a lovely sentiment, dear, but hardly the stuff dreams are made of. More importantly, not the stuff relationships are made of. You must know his history, it's been all over the television and the papers," she said. Her voice was supposed to sound sad. He didn't know what it sounded like in reality, but it was nothing like sorrow. Nothing even close.
“We all have history,” Liza insisted, “his is just more out there in the open for everyone to see. I think it’s sort of brave, actually.”
"Brave?" Mrs. Baker echoed, her voice thin and chilly. Her eyes were narrowing down to slits, and Wesley shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He'd seen that look before, plenty of times. He'd been on the receiving end of it more times than he liked to remember. Nobody talked back to his mom the way Liza was doing now, albeit respectfully and in a voice small enough to sound like it belonged to a little kid. Anybody who dared to do so had long ago been dispatched with.
“Well, yes, of course. At least I think it’s brave, for whatever that’s worth.”
“I’m sure it’s worth plenty,” his mom said in a voice that didn’t come close to matching the sentiment.
“It’s just that our secrets let us get away with so much, don’t you think? It makes us feel safe enough to do all kinds of things we would never want out in the open.”
"Depending on what kind of person you are, maybe," Charles offered up genially enough. Wesley was never going to really like the guy, but he appreciated that he wasn't going in for the kill alongside their mother. Maybe he'd get the guy a Christmas present after all.
"No, I don't think so. Even really good people, really straight and narrow people, have their secrets and they can be reasonably sure of keeping them. When you're in the public eye, though, you don't get to have that," Liza said, glancing at Wesley and smiling a little. He couldn't smile back. He was too stunned to do much more than sit there, slack-jawed and feeling like a grade A idiot. Nobody had ever taken up for him this way, and that was part of it, but it went deeper than that, too. It was the understanding, the empathy that surprised him. Also, he was becoming painfully curious about what this woman actually knew about him. Did she know his full asshole history? And if so, was she really willing to let it stay in the past where he wanted it to stay? If so, he might be in trouble. As it was, he was pretty sure he was halfway to being in love.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have the first idea what you’re talking about. Perhaps the two of you belong together after all. I’ve never understood this son of mine either. Not the first thing about him,” his mom said through a sneer.
“Yes, I can see that,” Liza countered. She’d been completely polite when she said it and her voice was so calm that, for a second, nobody did anything. Nobody said a word. Then Mrs. Baker sat up very straight in her high-backed chair. Her face was infused with bright color the likes of which Wesley couldn’t remember ever seeing in her cheeks. On the other side of Liza, Charlotte looked down at her plate as if it had suddenly become the most interesting thing in the world. Charles cleared his throat, almost as red-faced as his mother.
"Say now, I don't think that's appropriate. This is her home, after all," he said uncertainly.
"You're right. It's her home. I think it might be best for me to go," Liza said quietly, standing up a little shakily. Charlotte reached halfway towards her like she wanted to either keep her there or help her steady, and then let her hand fall back down into her lap. The only one who stood was Wesley, and he was hardly aware of doing it. His insides felt like lead, his head like it was on fire. He and his family had been at odds over the years more times than he could count but it had never been like this. Never before this moment had he ever been so utterly disgusted with them. Never before had he genuinely wished he was a part of a different family.
“Hold on a minute, Liza. You don’t have to go anywhere. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said hoarsely.
"I think I maybe did. And besides, I'm not feeling very well all of a sudden. I think
I'd like to go home and lie down for a minute," she answered him softly, not looking at him. Instead, she looked at his mom who was starting to look victorious despite the appearance she had suffered a deep afront.
“You can lie down upstairs if you need to,” Wesley insisted stubbornly. “There are so many fucking rooms in this house they won’t ever all be used.”
“Wesley, really. Language,” his mom chided. He looked at her with disbelief, fighting the urge to use a couple of other choice words for good measure.
“That’s alright. I don’t think this is the place for me. I’d like to say one more thing to you, Mrs. Baker, though.
If you’ll indulge me,” she said, her voice stronger now, her body steady again.
“Would I be able to stop you, dear?” Wesley’s mom asked in amusement that never reached her eyes.
"No, I don't think so," Liza allowed with a faint smile, "because it's important. I won't pretend to understand everything going on here because I don't. I do know that Wesley is a good man. He's a good man, and he works hard. I hope you see that. It would be so sad if I could see it and not you."
Wesley's head buzzed with too much blood, and when Liza turned to head back to the front door, he wasn't sure he would be able to follow. When he did, he hardly heard the uproar beginning behind him, Charlotte and Charles probably telling his mom that she was a wonderful mother and she shouldn't let a stupid outlier make her feel any different.
"Liza, hold on!" he called, afraid that she would just walk out the door without looking at him again. He couldn't stand that idea. It would fuck his head up royally until he could see her again. She stopped one hand on the door handle and then turned. Her eyes were wide and overly bright, her cheeks as red as his felt.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, shocked, “I don’t know what made me do that. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
"Are you kidding me? That was unreal! It was fucking awesome if you want to know the truth," he laughed, taking her in his arms. He wanted to kiss her deeply. No, scratch that. He wanted to pull her into the first vacant room, bend her over, and take her until both of them were screaming, and nothing else mattered to either of them. Except that when he touched her, when he tried to pull her in close to him, her body went rigid and tight. She let him touch her, but she also resisted being pressed against his chest. He looked down into her face questioningly and immediately wished he hadn't. All he got for his troubles was a jolt of sickness straight through his stomach.
“What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
“No, nothing. I wasn’t kidding, though, I’m not feeling so hot.”
"Let me take you home," he answered at once. Part of it was chivalry, but there was also a significant portion of him that just wanted to get the hell out of dodge. He sure as shit wasn't planning on sticking around with the family after the scene that had just gone down.
“I drove myself, remember?” she asked with a smile. He could see that it was work though – the act of smiling. She really didn’t look like she was feeling so hot. She didn’t look like she was feeling good at all.
"Okay, so I'll drive you in your car and take a cab home," he insisted. It was a stupid plan and he knew it. He also didn't give a shit.
“That’s silly. I’ll be fine, Wesley. I just need a nap. We’ll talk later, okay? If we have any more business together.”
"You bet we do," he said quickly. He tried to ignore the way she referred to their interactions as business, which made him want to put his fist through a wall. He also tried to ignore the fact that the business end of their dealings was all of his own devising.
"Good. So then give me a call. And good luck with that situation in there," she said ruefully, angling a thumb towards the room where they could both hear the aftermath of her unexpected monologue. She didn't give him a chance to answer, just walked out the door and shut it quietly behind her. He wanted to go after her and confess things he didn't fully understand. He wanted to go tell his family to fuck themselves and be done with them for good. He wanted to get into his car and drive until he was somewhere nobody knew who he was and he didn't know a single living soul because it became clear he was falling for Liza now, for sure and unavoidable. He was falling for her hard, and it was fucking terrifying.
Chapter Twelve
Liza Morris
Liza was far from being in the mood for company. She hadn't wanted to see or talk to anyone after fleeing the Baker matriarch's home, had in fact been so terrified that Wesley wouldn't allow her to leave on her own that she'd been sure she was going to puke right there in the foyer. She almost wished she had done so. It would have been the perfect ending to a shitty, shitty luncheon. It was the first event she had attended that could rightly be called a luncheon, and she was at least a little regretful of it not having gone better. The fact that it hadn't gone well because of her, because of her own stupid actions and impossible to control tongue, had played through her mind over and over again. A week without seeing or speaking to anyone was plenty of solitary time to torture yourself, a lesson she had learned brutally. By the time Melony called her on the eighth day, she was sure she was going crazy. She was tempted to tell Mel not to call, not to bother her again, just so she could have the freedom to completely fall apart without having anyone there to intervene and force her into being sane again. It was the thought of the baby that kept her from doing it. The baby growing inside of her who had zero faults in the messed up circumstances of its conception. The result of this line of thinking was that Melony was coming over, this time without a bottle of wine, to figure out what in the hell was going on. The insistent knocking on her apartment door was all Liza needed to know that her bestie was in one of her moods.
"What is it?" she demanded, barging through the door so forcefully that she almost knocked Liza to the ground. "Tell me what that prick did. If I need to start removing testicles, I will. Don't think I won't." She marched into the middle of the room and looked around carefully as if she expected to find Wesley lurking behind an overstuffed chair somewhere and waiting meekly for his announced castration.
“He didn’t do anything,” Liza answered with a wan smile, “and he isn’t here, just in case you’re wondering.”
"Good. He better not be," Melony said grimly.
"Did you miss the part where I said he didn't do anything wrong?" Liza asked, genuinely smiling now. Melony was a little nuts, but she had to hand it to her – she was the fiercest, most loyal friend a girl could hope for and certainly a good person to have in her corner when things started going sideways.
“No, I didn’t, but I also don’t believe you. Why else would you be so upset?”
"I'm not upset because he did something! I'm upset because I lost my shit, okay? Everything is such a mess, Melony. I've let everything turn into such a goddamn mess." She didn't so much as sit on the couch as fall back into it, sinking down into the cushions and resting her head in her hands. There were no tears, but Liza was certain they would come. She hadn't allowed herself to cry yet, not since finding out that she was pregnant, but it was coming, and when it did she was afraid she might not ever be able to stop them again. Melony sat beside her, uncharacteristically quiet, and put a hand on her back. They sat there together silently, with nothing but the ticking of the clock for a soundtrack, until Liza was reasonably sure she could keep herself together.
“Tell me, lady,” Melony crooned, “tell me what happened and I’ll tell you how we can fix it.”
“I don’t think we can,” Liz answered, feeling both dazed and thoroughly exhausted.
“Of course we can. Everything can be fixed. It’s just a matter of how we go about it,” Mel said.
"I can't tell him. I've tried dozens of times, and I can't get the words past my throat," Liza said miserably. Her apartment was far from cold, but she held her arms wrapped around her tightly. Even in the muggy heat, she shivered. Her mother would have told her a goose had walked over her grave, but Liza was starkly aware of her situation. It was looking into her future that gave her the chills. A future that wasn't looking so hot.
“You haven’t told him about the baby? But don’t you think he’s going to notice at some point? You can't exactly hide something like that.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
"So are you planning on taking care of it?" Melony asked, hesitating for a change while she spoke. Liza's hands dropped to her side, her hands balled into fists. Even the idea of getting rid of her baby, even discussing it in the theoretical, made her want to fly into a blind fury. She couldn't
blame Melony for asking the question, although she wanted to very badly. In a way, she was glad to have her say it again. There wasn't a more definite way of knowing what she wanted to do about the child than hearing someone suggest the unthinkable. At least that one thing was, again, irrevocably clear.
“No way, okay? Never. Don’t even suggest it,” she said, working not to sound too hostile.
“Good. It’s good that you’re so clear on the subject. So then tell me what’s going on? I thought you were planning on having told him by now.”
"I was. I almost did, a couple of times. First, there was the trip to Austin, and then I thought maybe after meeting his family. But the trip was so good I didn't want to mess things up, and the thing with his mom?" she said, cringing at the memory of the terrible get-together.
“Not so hot?” Melony prompted.
"Not even close to hot," Liza agreed, "it was a full-on disaster. I basically told his mom off in front of his brother and his brother's fiancée. Correct me if I'm wrong but telling a lady that she's a shitty mother probably isn't the best way to get on her good side, right?"